A moving story of resilience made all the sadder in a time of state-sponsored communalism and nationalism.
Earlier this year, the Indian news network NDTV, one of the only mainstream media channels in the country to raise issues against its government, was acquired by the country’s leading oligarch, the Adani Group. The acquisition by Gautam Adani, an outspoken supporter and old friend of the prime minister, has further raised questions about the state’s suppression of freedom of speech and expression, which has been manifested by the disqualification of opposition MPs and widespread crackdown on dissenters and dissidents. After the acquisition, one of the country’s most talked about senior journalists resigned from the news channel. Vinay Shukla’s moving new documentary tells the story of this one journalist.

The 92-minute documentary begins with Ravish Kumar entering an abandoned floor whose walls and ceiling are being dismantled. Holding a flashlight in his hand, he walks across the room, carefully examining the withered pieces while standing in silence. It is only at the end of the film that the viewer realizes that the abandoned place was an entire floor of NDTV’s workspace, which has now closed down as more and more people leave. The grim reality becomes even grimmer when the results of the 2019 general assembly elections emerge, where the country’s extreme right-wing party returned to power with an overwhelming majority.

Since he began working as a reporter for NDTV nearly three decades ago, Kumar has been the recipient of countless journalism awards. For most of his life, even after he was promoted to senior executive editor, Kumar’s personal life was kept quite far from the public eye. Shukla’s approach to these aspects seems sensitive as we watch tender moments of Kumar with his wife and young daughter. Around his workspace, the camera gently follows Kumar’s point of view. The sensuality here is similar to a tumultuous news drama, but never without nuance, which speaks to the daunting task of finding the truth in the post-truth era. It is in this vein that Shukla humanizes the process of journalism itself.

For the most part, the film is shot with a surprising restraint that makes the viewer feel more passive. This very passivity is even reinforced by a deep seething paranoia of being ahead of the events that the documentary chronicles; after 2016, there was a general rise in the number of populist leaders around the world, as well as the spread of xenophobia. Ultimately, the wave of disinformation contributed to the destruction of social fabric around the world.

But what makes Shukla’s documentary great is that it never becomes overly didactic, placing its antagonist in the foreground. The main focus remains on Kumar, and it is his insistence on the normalization of authoritarianism that forms the heartbeat of the story.